Current Therapies

Current Therapies

There are some therapies presently available to assist those who wish to regain some of the erogenous sensation, skin, and normal physical appearance lost to circumcision.

Preface: Any and all restorative procedures to the foreskin will have risks attributed to them. Foregen and its representatives are not personally qualified to recommend any one procedure to an individual and do not accept responsibility for any damages or injuries incurred by performing restoration.

Non-surgical techniques, or methods of Manual Restoration, provide some of the best therapies currently available. Manual restoration utilizes the body’s natural process of mitosis, or the generation of extra skin cells, by applying sustained tension to the skin of the penis. Shaft skin is pulled towards, and after sufficient growth, over the head of the penis. If performed properly, and as recommended by resources such as the National Organization of Restoring Men (NORM), shaft skin can eventually recover the glans and restore the gliding motion lost to circumcision. This thereby re-sensitizes the glans and restores a closer-to-normal appearance to the penis. Manual restoration is a journey that is fairly inexpensive, with many methods and devices to choose from, both commercial and DIY. It takes dedication and often many years of effort (usually over a 4 hour regimen repeated daily).

Manual restoration is different from Foreskin Regeneration in that it stretches the shaft tissue already present on the penis post-circumcision. Manual restoration does not replace or regrow the nervous tissue cut off the penis during circumcision, nor recreate the unique structure of the foreskin, especially that of a functional frenulum (almost always cut or torn in circumcision), the inner mucosal tissue, and the frenar band at the tip of the foreskin, which are all important functioning features of the natural human penis.

There are a number of worthwhile institutes and enterprises dedicated to assisting men to restore their foreskin manually via stretching techniques in this way. For more information on such therapy, please see NORM, TLC Tugger, or Restoring for Men. Foregen encourages every man to follow the path towards genital integrity that suits him best.

Secondly, latex medical devices which mimic the presence of a foreskin are available commercially (see, for example, the Senslip). These products, which are physically attached by the patient to a circumcised penis, give the impression and mimic some of the functions of a foreskin in the flaccid state (namely, protecting the glans from rubbing and desensitisation.) Their drawback, unfortunately, is that they do not in fact bring back in any way the foreskin to the penis, which remains in its circumcised state. They are useful, however, for men who cannot undertake skin stretching techniques.

Thirdly, skin grafting (either from the patient himself or from a third party source) has proven to be undesirable and has yielded very poor outcomes. This is due to the fact that the skin grafted on to imitate the foreskin does not have the unique properties or consistency of the foreskin. The skin grafted is thicker, rougher and does not have the appearance or function that the natural foreskin does, in particular that of the lined mucosa of the inner foreskin. Additionally, skin grafting bears the risk of immune rejection and even more significant scarring than circumcision produces. Skin grafting does not restore the sense capacity lost in circumcision because it does not bring back the sensitive nerve tissue of the foreskin but merely provides normal skin to imitate what once was there.

None of these therapies in fact restore the original tissue of the foreskin removed in circumcision, which is what makes them so limited in their scope. None fully recreates the appearance and function of the human foreskin. Only regenerative medicine is capable of producing actual tissue regeneration with the real skin of the intact adult male.